Tuesday, May 22, 2007

My field slaves--Julie and Kelly--ready to head into the Alaskan bush.

I went on another short work trip today. I did some hydrologic field work along the Yukon River in the villages of Beaver, Ft. Yukon and Circle City. These villages are only accessible by plane. In order to get all the work done in one day I charted a Cessna 207 and dragged along 2 lovely field assistants from my office to serve as my slaves. Julie is our summer hire from Penn State and she was lucky enough to come out to the field with me on her second day on the job.

The thriving metropolis of Beaver on the Yukon River.

We were transported on the river observers 4-wheeler because there are no vehicles in this village.

Ft. Yukon looks like Beaver on steroids--there are stops signs, vehicles, and a lot more people.

Fortunately Kelly had a life jacket on because she almost did a swan dive over the nose of the boat while trying to grab some of our equipment when we were surveying the river.

My field assistants were easily entertained by the sites of Ft. Yukon.

I made the girls do all the manual labor while I sat back and barked orders.

My river observers in Ft. Yukon invited us over for potato salad, rhubarb cake, iced tea and a weenie roast.